Page 65 of Avenging the Earl's Lady
“Haven’t seen him.”
His drink arrived.He picked up a paper and scanned the reports of the King’s proposed travel to Ireland.
Shaldon had mentioned a possible position abroad.He wouldn’t want to find himself in Ireland though.Paris, Vienna, or Italy would be acceptable.
A shadow fell over his newssheet and he looked up.
“Fortune has favored you today.”Major Payne-Elsdon’s eyes gleamed in the lamp light.He took the opposite chair at the table.“Yet you’re not joining the play.”
He glanced over.One man was scribbling his vowels and departing.He doubted they’d want the Major replacing him.The man was widely believed to cheat, but no one had caught him out at it and no one wanted to duel with him.It was a certain thing that Major Payne-Elsdon would not delope with his shot.He would aim straight for his opponent’s heart.
“No,” Penderbrook said.He turned a page and skimmed the contents, unseeing.
The waiter appeared and Penderbrook shook his head at another drink.
“Come, Penderbrook.You’ve paid me off.Let me buy you a drink.”
A chill rattled through him, a trickle of sweat sliding down the back of his neck.Like a damned rabbit he was when around Payne-Elsdon, always wandering into a trap.Everything with the man was a potential snare.
He glanced at the clock and set his paper aside.“I beg your pardon.Early day tomorrow.”
Bowing he headed for the door, but Payne-Elsdon’s voice rang out.“Off to join your new lady, are you?”
The room hushed, and he pivoted, bile rising in him.
“What a surprise to find you’re Lady Jane Montfort’s by-blow.By whom, I wonder?”Payne-Elsdon stood.“Now that she’s Shaldon’s bit, perhaps she’ll give you a noble by-blow brother.”
The hush around him was like a death watch.The events of that day and the one before flashed in his mind’s eye, Shaldon’s words echoing also.Honorable men did not insult ladies.Honorable men did not risk more than their means.
Lady Jane had given him life, and life was all he had to risk for her.
“Payne-Elsdon, you will cease defaming the lady.”
“Or else?”
Heat rose in him.Certainty.It was, as Shaldon had said, time to step up and be a man.
“Look around,” he said.“You, Payne-Elsdon, are not welcome at anyone’s table.You measure your losses until the stakes are large, and then youalwayswin.And one wonders how that can be.Though no one has caught you out…yet.”
He waited.Payne-Elsdon smiled.“Your mother is a whore who left you on a parson’s doorstep.”
More sweat rose on his neck, belying the icy rage in his belly.“Lady Jane is no whore.”He took a deep breath.“You and I will meet, Payne-Elsdon.”
Under his oily mustache, the Major’s lip curled.“Then I claim my rights as the man challenged.It shall be swords.Otherwise, I defer to all your wishes and await word from your second.”He chuckled.“Best write your will.Shaldon won’t rescue you this time.”
“And you’d best loosen your neck cloth to make room for the noose.You might kill on the Continent with abandon, but your Spanish Duque won’t rescue you from English justice.”
He was aware of the aura of shock all around, the sudden quiet, and then the scrapes of chairs being pushed back, all the fools rushing to make notes in the betting book.
His world had come crashing down, but so be it.
“Good heavens, Ewan.”Jane pressed the corner of her shawl to her nose, holding the hackney’s stench at bay.The odor of strong cologne and stale tobacco she could stand, but the smell of recently cleaned vomit was almost too much.
“Best I could do.”Ewan glowered at her in the dark.
Oh, she couldn’t see his eyes, but his tone was unmistakable.He’d followed her out of the house and then she’d bullied him without mercy until he’d fetched this squalid conveyance.
“Hmmph,” she said, hiding her relief that he’d done her bidding, not simply thrown her respectfully over his shoulder and forced her back to the house on Gerrard Street.
